Everyone wants to win at a tournament, and it can get pretty competitive, and that's kind of the point. But you generally don't expect the other team to resort to trickery off the ice to try to gain the upper hand. The only one I'm pissed off at more for what happened is myself for falling for it.
Friday night, we stopped at a bar to refuel and relax. At a table near us was a group of women, some of whom had the same "USA Hockey National Championships" hats that we had, and a conversation was struck up. (Not by me. I still do not get the "making friends with opponents" thing. I can see it if there's just a few teams in a league and you play each other over and over. But at a tournament? No thanks.) I heard one woman going on about how she was the goalie, so I piped up and said I was a goalie too and we clinked glasses. The beer or two I had while waiting for the food we so desperately needed went right to my head, apparently, because she shook my hand and introduced herself, and then asked "So what's your weakness?" And I fucking told her. The words were barely out of my mouth before I started mentally kicking myself.
It wasn't until we hit the ice the next morning that I realized how big of a jackass I had really been. Their goalie was on the blue line, shaking out her hair and putting her mask on. She was clearly not the woman I'd talked to the night before. No, the woman I'd spoken with was a forward. A very show-boaty cocky forward, clearly the one on the team to whom everyone deferred. I was stunned that she had pulled something like that, and so was everyone else. I managed to make a few saves on her, but she did score one goal. Each shot was right to my weak spot. After the first one, when I made the save and smothered the puck, she tapped me and said "nice save".
Pretty messed up trick to pull, but I deserve some of the blame for falling for it. I don't know what I was thinking, except that my initial reaction was to not even speak to her, but I chided myself for taking everything too seriously and what harm could it be to talk a little shop with another goalie. She displayed even less class when, as we left the ice after beating them 6-2, she crowed that she'd scored on me. I turned and said to her "well, I stuffed you, too, so I guess we're even".
That win put us in the semi-finals though, so the last laugh is on her. We had a few hours' break and then it was back to the rink again. We played against a team from the other division, and they'd won every single one of their games, so we were prepared for a pretty even battle. It turned out to be more of a slaughter. After giving up two extremely weak and uncharateristic goals in the beginning of the first, I got my head on straight and played well for the rest of the game. We ended up winning 10-2, but it wasn't like the first game, where I saw no shots. In this one I had 25. At least that made it interesting. And best of all, it meant we were headed for the finals, which would be played the next morning. No partying for the QCats that night. Everyone wanted to be rested and fresh, because we knew we'd face the one team that had beaten us in the round robin. So, sorry to disappoint, but there was no wild beer-pong, bra-on-ceiling-fan hilarity that night. Just a bunch of very focused hockey players waiting for the chance to win it all.
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